0000000000119646
AUTHOR
Carpitella S.
A multi-objective and multi-criteria approach for district metered area design: water operation and quality analysis
Water distribution network (WDN) operation may be improved by district metered area (DMA) design [1]. A first step to create DMAs uses graph theory and non-supervised learning, where physical features of the WDN, such as node coordinates, elevation and demand, are used for clustering purposes [2]. A second step is related to the necessary isolation of the clustered elements. For isolation purposes, it is important to determine the DMA entrances and, consequently, the needed cut-off valves. Closure of pipes and definition of DMA entrances can be set as an optimization problem with the costs associated to the valves, which are linked to pipe diameters, as a primary objective. However, placeme…
Characterization of the consistent completion of analytic hierarchy process comparison matrices using graph theory
Decision-making is frequently affected by uncertainty and/or incomplete information, which turn decision-making into a complex task. It is often the case that some of the actors involved in decision-making are not sufficiently familiar with all of the issues to make the appropriate decisions. In this paper, we are concerned about missing information. Specifically, we deal with the problem of consistently completing an analytic hierarchy process comparison matrix and make use of graph theory to characterize such a completion. The characterization includes the degree of freedom of the set of solutions and a linear manifold and, in particular, characterizes the uniqueness of the solution, a re…
Some awkward issues on pairwise comparison matrices
Many decision-making techniques use pairwise comparisons (PCs) elicited by one or more stakeholders involved in a given corresponding decision-making process. In very complex problems, the number of criteria or options to be compared may be too large, thus limiting PC applicability to large-scale decision problems due to the so-called curse of dimensionality, that is, a large number of pairwise comparisons need to be produced from a decision maker. For example, in AHP, Saaty [1] recommends that to obtain a reasonable and consistent PC matrix, the number of comparing elements should be at most seven. In [2] and [3], arguing on limitations of the human capabilities, the maximum number of elem…
How sustainability factors influence maintenance of water distribution systems feeding manufacturing industries
This work aims to analyse the role played by relevant sustainability factors towards the implementation of maintenance interventions in the manufacturing industrial sector. In this context, we focus on industrial water distribution systems, on whose effective work depends the functioning of core plants as well as general industrial facilities. In detail, we propose aMulti-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) application based on the use of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) as amethodological way to prioritise maintenance interventions while considering the influence of some of themost relevant sustainability factors identified in literature. The main advantage of such an approach consists in th…